How to Solve the 10 Causes of Low Employee Productivity?

HR Employee

For maximum organizational growth, output, and profits, your employees need to become the most productive. However, it’s more than it looks on the surface. No matter how much employers and managers try to boost the productivity of their employees, if they are not working on eliminating their pain points, it’s just a waste of time. Thus, in this blog, we will give you insightful details into the 10 enemies of low productivity and how you can defeat them.

What is Employee Productivity? 

In short, employee productivity is a performance scale for your employees. It measures how much objective-fulfilling work your employees do. However, there are other insightful details as well.

  • Employee efficiency, engagement, productivity, and performance are correlated. For example, enhanced employee efficiency leads to more productivity.
  • You can’t force your employees to be more productive. However, using good productivity measurement software automatically does it.

That defines employee productivity. However, why is it essential?

The Importance of Employee Productivity

Let us give it to you straight. Employee productivity is the soul of your organization. Why? More employee productivity leads to more of everything good for your organization including more profits.

More Output and Profits

If you have a productive workforce, the result will be more quality work in less time. This generates more quality output and profits for your organization.

Decreased Expenses

Efficient and productive work means less time wastage. This translates to reduced costs for your company.

More Client Satisfaction

Timely project satisfaction, quality work, productive work, and the best performance. All of these boost your organization’s reputation, which not only increases current client satisfaction but also earns you more clients.

Increased Organizational Growth     

Decreased expenses, more output, and profits, and more client satisfaction proportionately result in more organizational growth and financial success for your business.

Overall, you need to do everything you can to increase staff productivity. However, at times, the productivity of your employees is not ample. You need to know the reasons why and the methods to solve this large issue.

The Causes of Low Employee Productivity

Are you facing low employee productivity in your organization? This is a large issue, which if remains unsolved for long can become a permanent issue. You need to know the causes and act on solving them fast.

Inadequate Tools and Technologies

One of the common causes of low employee productivity is inadequate tools and technologies. These can include outdated tools or tools that aid in productivity boost. It’s obvious that if there aren’t enough necessary tools, then you can forget quality work.

Solution: Set a budget to successfully implement the required tools and technologies in your organization.

Poor Workplace Atmosphere

What’s a poor work environment? By definition, it’s the one where all employees are treated unequally, managers turn a blind eye to employee concerns, and staff members don’t get enough time off. This results in more stress and frustration, leading to low productivity.

Solution: Make a good work atmosphere where employees also get much-deserved importance and support.

Insufficient Training

This is what we consider the worst reason for low employee productivity. You must have heard the phrase, “No one is born an expert”, your employees included. So, you can’t expect your employees to deliver productive work, if they don’t know how to, especially if they lack work experience.

Solution: Make tailored employee training programs, so that your employees can get ready to deliver quality work.

Not Defining Clear Objectives

Confusion leads to chaos. However, in our case though, it leads to low employee productivity. Furthermore, if there is no clarity either, employee focus will also decrease.

Solution: Open communication with your employees, letting them know all the objectives.

Low Employee Morale

There can be many causes of low employee morale including a poor work environment, undervaluing, underappreciation, or lacking a sense of work purpose. This causes them to not put in their best effort, which will result in low productivity.

Solution: Appreciate your team members for their achievements and get regular feedback to keep employees motivated for productive work.

Too Much Workload

Too much workload is another one of the biggest reasons, which decreases the productivity of your employees. How? Imagine a horse that can carry only 150 kg at a time, if you put 200 Kg on its back, its leg will break under its weight. Similarly, if your employees do more work than their capacity, their productivity will decrease due to stress and burnout.

Solution: Distribute optimal workload among your employees and teams. We recommend using productivity monitoring software for automation assistance for the same.

Fewer Rewards and Appraisals

When employees don’t get enough appraisals and rewards for their achievements, they will naturally feel like they are not part of your organization but donkeys pulling heavy carts. This will result in lower morale leading to less productivity.

Solution: Work on improving your employee reward system. If you find any bias, remove it for the best of your staff and organization.

Poor Management

Sometimes, managers are also to blame for your organization’s employees’ low productivity. That is if they don’t know how to manage due to lack of experience or are self-centered.

Solution: Like your employees, there should also be training programs for managers and everyone else working for your organization.

Micromanagement 

This is a big no for any organization that wishes to achieve maximum productivity. Furthermore, lack of leadership and unclear communication is also the biggest enemy of high employee productivity.

Solution: Eliminate micromanagement from your organization. One way to do it is to have only one immediate boss per team.

Poor Mental Health 

All of the reasons we discussed above lead to poor mental health in your employees, decreasing productivity.

Solution: Regularly check on your employees for signs of health issues. This is known as behavior analysis, which we can simplify with the right employee monitoring software.

How to Boost Employee Productivity through Software?

Throughout this blog, we have mentioned using software applications to boost employee productivity. However, how can you do it? Let’s discuss it in this section.

  • Software for managing staff has a feature called behavior analytics, which lets you identify any unusual employee behavior.
  • The monitoring is in real-time. This ensures that you can make on-the-spot decisions for enhancing employee performance.
  • We recommend using the pause and resume tracking feature, allowing enough breaks for your employees to work to the best of their skills.

Conclusion

There are many ways to define employee productivity. However, in general, it is the measurement of your employees’ objective-fulfilling work. Furthermore, employee efficiency, productivity, engagement, and productivity are correlated. Speaking of which, employers will do everything they can to get high employee productivity. This results in more output, profits, reduced costs, more client satisfaction, and growth. However, at times, reasons including low employee morale, poor work environment, and micromanagement can decrease employee productivity. Thus, managers also need to look into solving these issues, increasing productivity. Furthermore, special software can also aid in simplifying these complex processes. Need a suggestion? We recommend DeskTrack as the best productivity enabler.

FAQ

What is Employee Productivity?

Employee productivity is the performance scale of your employees against their work. This is correlated to employee efficiency and engagement. The higher one or more is, the others will also skyrocket. Overall, higher productivity is more objective-fulfilling work.

What are the Benefits of High Employee Productivity?

Employers and managers will do everything to increase employee engagement, efficiency, productivity, and performance. That’s because high employee productivity gives many competitive advantages to organizations including but not limited to:

  • More output and profits
  • Reduced costs
  • More client satisfaction
  • Increased organizational growth

What are the Reasons for Low Employee Productivity?

Employers and managers will do everything they can to increase employee productivity. However, sometimes, these efforts are not good enough or some improvements are needed. Nevertheless, these are the reasons for decreased staff productivity.

  • Inadequate tools and technologies
  • Poor workplace environment
  • Insufficient training
  • Not defining clear objectives
  • Low employee morale
  • Too much workload
  • Fewer rewards and appraisals
  • Poor management
  • Micromanagement

How To Boost Employee Productivity with Software?

Although there are many ways to increase employee productivity and earn maximum profits, using appropriate tools is the best way to simplify all these complex processes. Here’s why.

  • Software for managing staff has a feature called behavior analytics, which lets you identify any unusual employee behavior.
  • The monitoring is in real-time. This ensures that you can make on-the-spot decisions for enhancing employee performance.
  • We recommend using the pause and resume tracking feature, allowing enough breaks for your employees to work to the best of their skills.

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